Articles by Tom Challenger, BA

Past Tense of Hear | Meaning & Examples

Published on March 7, 2025 by Tom Challenger, BA. Revised on December 30, 2025

The simple past tense of hear is “heard” (e.g., “I heard a strange noise in the night”). The past participle of “hear” is also “heard” (e.g. “Have you heard the news?).

If you’ve heard from someone, it means they have contacted you. If you’ve heard of something or someone, it means you are aware of it or them.

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Past Tense of Dive | Explanation & Examples

Published on March 7, 2025 by Tom Challenger, BA. Revised on December 30, 2025

The simple past tense of dive is “dove” or “dived” (e.g., “She dove/dived into the cold water”).

The past participle of “dive” is “dived” (e.g., “I have never dived off a 10-meter platform”).

In British English, the past tense of “dive” is “dived,” not “dove.”

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Past Tense of Eat | Examples & Meaning

Published on February 26, 2025 by Tom Challenger, BA. Revised on December 30, 2025

The simple past tense of eat is “ate” (e.g., “Somebody ate all the cupcakes I left in the kitchen”). The past participle of “eat” is “eaten” (e.g., “Somebody has eaten all the cupcakes”).

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Soft Skills for a Resume | What to List With Examples

Published on February 26, 2025 by Tom Challenger, BA. Revised on March 12, 2026

Soft skills for a resume are the abilities that enable you to interact and communicate effectively with customers, clients, and coworkers. Soft skills are less “teachable” than hard skills because they’re closely tied to your personality and character. You typically develop these skills through practical experience rather than formal education.

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Hard Skills for a Resume | What to List With Examples

Published on February 26, 2025 by Tom Challenger, BA. Revised on March 12, 2026

Hard skills for a resume are specific competencies that you typically acquire through formal education or training or by doing a particular job (e.g., being able to program using JavaScript or speak a foreign language). This contrasts with soft skills, which are to do with how you interact with other people and your personality (e.g., patience, attention to detail, and flexibility).

Hard skills relate to the know-how you need to perform a specific task, whereas soft skills enable you to collaborate effectively, manage your time well, and adapt to different work environments—making them relevant to a wider range of jobs. Descriptions of hard skills are a crucial component of resumes, cover letters and letters of interest.

Technical skills are a subcategory of hard skills. These are the hard skills required to use specific tools or technologies such as programming languages (e.g., Python), machinery (e.g., forklifts), or software platforms (e.g., CAD software).

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Past Tense of Run | Definition & Examples

Published on February 25, 2025 by Tom Challenger, BA. Revised on December 30, 2025

The simple past tense of run is “ran.” The past participle form of “run,” used in the present perfect simple tense, is “run.”

The verb “run” can mean “operate” or “manage” as well as “move quickly on foot.”

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Past Tense of Ski | Explanation & Examples

Published on February 20, 2025 by Tom Challenger, BA. Revised on December 30, 2025

The simple past tense of ski is “skied,” and its past participle form is also “skied” (i.e., spelled with one “i.”). However, if you want to use the verb “ski” in the past progressive tense, the verb form has a double “i” (e.g., “She was skiing in Aspen”).

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Action Verbs for a Resume | List & Examples

Published on February 18, 2025 by Tom Challenger, BA. Revised on November 18, 2025

In the context of resumes, cover letters, and letters of interest, action verbs are words that help you to create impactful descriptions of work experience, skills, and professional achievements because:

• They are verbs that describe a dynamic action—rather than nouns that describe a duty or task or stative verbs like “was” or “became.”
• They typically replace overused words (e.g., “supported” or “facilitated,” instead of “helped”).
• They often imply that you can work independently and under your own initiative (e.g., “executed” or “implemented” instead of “tasked with”).

Action verbs are also sometimes referred to as power verbs or active verbs.

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Skills for a Resume | What to List With Examples

Published on February 14, 2025 by Tom Challenger, BA. Revised on November 18, 2025

Your resume should showcase the skills that are most relevant to the job, internship, scholarship, or program you’re applying for. So, when selecting the skills for a resume, you need to analyze the posting or application documentation carefully to determine the skills they’re looking for and edit your resume to prioritize the ones you have.

Make sure you put a mix of hard and soft skills on your resume.

• Hard skills are specific abilities that you can learn to do on a course or by doing a particular job (e.g., using Microsoft Word or bookkeeping tasks).
• Soft skills are more difficult to acquire through formal education and training because they’re to do with your personality and how you interact with other people (e.g., staying calm under pressure or attention to detail).

If your resume format has a separate skills section, the skills can be listed in categories, like “technical skills” (e.g., proficiency in using specific software, IT tools, or equipment), “languages,” and “soft skills.”

• Edit the list so the most relevant skills are at the top.
• If you’re listing over 15 items, it’s probably too many—some experts recommend as few as five. Limiting the number of items will also help you to keep your resume to a suitable length.
• The list in the skills section can be key words and phrases (e.g., “MS Word & Excel”) or extended bullet points (e.g., “Proficient in Microsoft Word & Excel for document creation, data analysis, and office automation”), depending on the resume format you’ve chosen.
• Don’t forget to provide concrete evidence of the most important skills in your cover letter, letter of interest, or in the work experience or education sections of your resume—tangible examples such as descriptions of duties that required these skills.

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For | Definition, Meaning & Uses

Published on February 11, 2025 by Tom Challenger, BA. Revised on November 27, 2025

Function words like “in,” “on,” “at,” and for (prepositions)—which are typically covered in grammar rather than vocabulary lessons when you’re learning a language—convey meaning by helping to show relationships between different parts of a sentence. Content words, on the other hand, like “definition” (a noun) or “define” (a verb), which we think of as “vocabulary,” carry a lot of meaning on their own.

Because for typically doesn’t mean very much as an individual word, knowing how it functions in terms of its part of speech is key to understanding what it communicates. “For” almost always functions as a preposition, helping to express ideas such as “intention,” “purpose,” “reason,” and “duration.”

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